January 04, 2017

May men go extinct

A catchy pop song in Saudi Arabia that rails against the oppression of women and has been denounced as disgusting has gone viral on the internet.

Hwages, which roughly translates as “concerns” in English, features female singers in the full Islamic face veil dancing and skateboarding while singing “If only God would rid us of men”.

In less than a week the video has been viewed more than two million times on YouTube.

It was written by Majed Alesa, the Saudi producer who created the controversial Barbs (“messy”) hip-hop video, which started a shuffling dance craze that took the Middle East by storm.

His latest video opens with a young boy driving a car full of women, mocking the law that bans women from driving. The female singers then ride around town in bumper cars, on children’s bikes, roller blades and scooters as men dance in front of their cars and aircraft.

The women go on to engage in even more controversial pursuits — playing basketball and knocking down bowling pins that display male faces. They mock Donald Trump, who was accused during the US presidential campaign of sexually harassing women.

“May men go extinct, they cause us to have mental illnesses,” the girls sing, referencing the lyrics of a 2014 protest song in Saudi Arabia. They add: “May they all go crazy, they seem to be possessed.”

The song aims to highlight crippling restrictions on women in the wealthy Gulf state and has inevitably split opinions in the conservative country. Hundreds took to Twitter to praise it for helping to empower women and “feminist campaigns all around the world”.

Many others were outraged. One Saudi citizen, Hassan al-Ghamdi, tweeted: “The director offends the Muslim women in our country. Where are our preachers to deny this?”

Another man identified as Majid called it “cheap and extremely inappropriate”. A third said it was “disgusting”....

Under Saudi Arabia’s strict interpretation of Sharia, women are barred from obtaining driving licences and those who flout the ban are jailed. All female citizens are subject to a crushing guardianship system that obliges them to seek permission from male relatives to do everything from opening a bank account to travelling.

Last week a Saudi man was sentenced to a year in jail and fined £6,500 for calling for an end to male guardianship. He was arrested while putting up posters in mosques demanding that the system be scrapped.

His detention came two months after more than 15,000 people signed an online petition urging the authorities to end the scheme. “I am my own guardian” became a hashtag on Twitter.

A tentative relaxation of restrictions began under the late King Abdullah, who in 2011 granted women the right to vote. The royal family has since ignored pleas to push forward with reforms under pressure from the country’s clerics and political figures. In November Saudi Arabia’s Shura Council, which advises the cabinet and king, voted against even discussing the driving ban.

Ultraconservative imams, who wield considerable power, have argued that cancelling the male guardianship scheme or driving ban would encourage immoral behaviour in women.

I don't know. Needless to say the writer, Majed Alesa, is a man. And nothing shouts "female liberation" like a bunch of women doing silly stuff under a man's direction while wearing niqabs.